Mentally and physically, I must be much older than my years. At three-
and-fifty a man ought not to be brooding constantly on his vanished
youth. These days of spring which I should be enjoying for their own
sake, do but turn me to reminiscence, and my memories are of the springs
that were lost.
Some day I will go to London and revisit all the places where I housed in
the time of my greatest poverty. I have not seen them for a quarter of a
century or so. Not long ago, had any one asked me how I felt about these
memories, I should have said that there were certain street names,
certain mental images of obscure London, which made me wretched as often
as they came before me; but, in truth, it is a very long time since I was
moved to any sort of bitterness by that retrospect of things hard and
squalid. Now, owning all the misery of it in comparison with what should
have been, I find that part of life interesting and pleasant to look back
upon--greatly more so than many subsequent times, when I lived amid
decencies and had enough to eat. Some day I will go to London, and spend
a day or two amid the dear old horrors. Some of the places, I know, have
disappeared. I see the winding way by which I went from Oxford Street,
at the foot of Tottenham Court Road, to Leicester Square, and, somewhere
in the labyrinth (I think of it as always foggy and gas-lit) was a shop
which had pies and puddings in the window, puddings and pies kept hot by
steam rising through perforated metal. How many a time have I stood
there, raging with hunger, unable to purchase even one pennyworth of
food! The shop and the street have long since vanished; does any man
remember them so feelingly as I? But I think most of my haunts are still
in existence: to tread again those pavements, to look at those grimy
doorways and purblind windows, would affect me strangely.
I see that alley hidden on the west side of Tottenham Court Road, where,
after living in a back bedroom on the top floor, I had to exchange for
the front cellar; there was a difference, if I remember rightly, of
sixpence a week, and sixpence, in those days, was a very great
consideration--why, it meant a couple of meals. (I once _found_ sixpence
in the street, and had an exultation which is vivid in me at this
moment.) The front cellar was stone-floored; its furniture was a table,
a chair, a wash-stand, and a bed; the window, which of course had never
been cleaned since it was put in, received light through a flat grating
in the alley above. Here I lived; here _I wrote_. Yes, "literary work"
was done at that filthy deal table, on which, by the bye, lay my Homer,
my Shakespeare, and the few other books I then possessed. At night, as I
lay in bed, I used to hear the tramp, tramp of a _posse_ of policemen who
passed along the alley on their way to relieve guard; their heavy feet
sometimes sounded on the grating above my window.
I recall a tragi-comical incident of life at the British Museum. Once,
on going down into the lavatory to wash my hands, I became aware of a
notice newly set up above the row of basins. It ran somehow thus:
"Readers are requested to bear in mind that these basins are to be used
only for casual ablutions." Oh, the significance of that inscription!
Had I not myself, more than once, been glad to use this soap and water
more largely than the sense of the authorities contemplated? And there
were poor fellows working under the great dome whose need, in this
respect, was greater than mine. I laughed heartily at the notice, but it
meant so much.
Some of my abodes I have utterly forgotten; for one reason or another, I
was always moving--an easy matter when all my possessions lay in one
small trunk. Sometimes the people of the house were intolerable. In
those days I was not fastidious, and I seldom had any but the slightest
intercourse with those who dwelt under the same roof, yet it happened now
and then that I was driven away by human proximity which passed my
endurance. In other cases I had to flee from pestilential conditions.
How I escaped mortal illness in some of those places (miserably fed as I
always was, and always over-working myself) is a great mystery. The
worst that befell me was a slight attack of diphtheria--traceable, I
imagine, to the existence of a dust-bin _under the staircase_. When I
spoke of the matter to my landlady, she was at first astonished, then
wrathful, and my departure was expedited with many insults.
On the whole, however, I had nothing much to complain of except my
poverty. You cannot expect great comfort in London for four-and-sixpence
a week--the most I ever could pay for a "furnished room with attendance"
in those days of pretty stern apprenticeship. And I was easily
satisfied; I wanted only a little walled space in which I could seclude
myself, free from external annoyance. Certain comforts of civilized life
I ceased even to regret; a stair-carpet I regarded as rather extravagant,
and a carpet on the floor of my room was luxury undreamt of. My sleep
was sound; I have passed nights of dreamless repose on beds which it
would now make my bones ache only to look at. A door that locked, a fire
in winter, a pipe of tobacco--these were things essential; and, granted
these, I have been often richly contented in the squalidest garret. One
such lodging is often in my memory; it was at Islington, not far from the
City Road; my window looked upon the Regent's Canal. As often as I think
of it, I recall what was perhaps the worst London fog I ever knew; for
three successive days, at least, my lamp had to be kept burning; when I
looked through the window, I saw, at moments, a few blurred lights in the
street beyond the Canal, but for the most part nothing but a yellowish
darkness, which caused the glass to reflect the firelight and my own
face. Did I feel miserable? Not a bit of it. The enveloping gloom
seemed to make my chimney-corner only the more cosy. I had coals, oil,
tobacco in sufficient quantity; I had a book to read; I had work which
interested me; so I went forth only to get my meals at a City Road coffee-
shop, and hastened back to the fireside. Oh, my ambitions, my hopes! How
surprised and indignant I should have felt had I known of any one who
pitied me!
Nature took revenge now and then. In winter time I had fierce sore
throats, sometimes accompanied by long and savage headaches. Doctoring,
of course, never occurred to me; I just locked my door, and, if I felt
very bad indeed, went to bed--to lie there, without food or drink, till I
was able to look after myself again. I could never ask from a landlady
anything which was not in our bond, and only once or twice did I receive
spontaneous offer of help. Oh, it is wonderful to think of all that
youth can endure! What a poor feeble wretch I now seem to myself, when I
remember thirty years ago!